View full sizeCHRISTINE BAKER, The Patriot-News Chesapeake Bay Foundation educator Tom Parke canoes with Palmyra Middle School seventh-grader Matthias Mandl, 13, as they head to a creek at State Memorial Lake in Grantville, so they could determine the water quality there. It doesn’t take too much effort or time to name any number of threats to the environment, from pollution to suburban sprawl to the ever-growing number of cars on the road.

Naming some successes in environmental protection is probably a much bigger challenge.

As Earth Day turns 40 on Thursday, The Patriot-News spoke with various advocates and experts on the environment. They touted some remarkable victories in the conservation and protection of natural resources and wildlife.

“In the last 40 years it’s been the people who made the difference,” says Gina Mason, a former Department of Environmental Protection employee who now teaches Environmental Science at Palmyra Middle School. “Earth Day spawned the E.P.A., which created the regulations that cleaned up the environment.”

The Susquehanna River is much cleaner than it was years ago.

Hunters have been at the forefront of a resurgence of species like the bobcat and the bald eagle.

Farmers have volunteered to administer and participate in farmland preservation projects.

Industries of all kinds have worked to reduce the amount of pollutants that go into our air and our water.

And teachers learn about ecosystems so they can pass the torch to the next generation of stewards for our planet.

From activists fighting for a cause to people who simply turn out the lights when they aren’t really needed, it takes a collective effort to make a difference.

While there’s much work yet to be done, here are some examples that prove change for the better can happen.

Learning By Doing

“I’ve got a green squiggly thing!” announced one of the 23 Palmyra Middle School students sloshing around in Indiantown Run with nets and kitchen strainers.

Tom Parke, an educator with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation explained, “It’s a caddisfly.”

Parke was leading the students in a “macro-invertebrates” study to asses the quality of the stream running into Memorial Lake near Fort Indiantown Gap.

In addition to handling real live squiggly things, the students learn practical boating skills, basic chemistry, even how to patch a boot.

“Education has gone from being only in the classroom and reading textbooks about what nature is and what science is to getting kids out in the field as much as possible for hands-on activities,” said Kelly Donaldson, spokeswoman for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which runs education programs for school students every day in the spring and fall. “To care about something, you have to understand it, and once you understand it, you’ll want to protect it.”

Environmental Science is now part of the regular school curriculum at Palmyra and at schools around the state.

Palmyra teacher Gina Mason had a hand in reviewing those curriculum standards when she worked for the state Department of Environmental Protection. “It’s not enough just to know it,” she said, “We want kids to own the environment.”

A Cleaner Susquehanna

A cleaner river in Harrisburg means a healthier Chesapeake Bay, and potentially cheaper crab cakes.

The river provides over half the fresh water that flows into the bay, but the definition of “fresh” was called into question in the 1970s, when the world’s first marine “dead zone” was identified in the Chesapeake - caused by oxygen depletion from a proliferation of algae feeding on nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into the bay from rivers like the Susquehanna.

Jan Jarrett, president and CEO of PennFuture, grew up on the Susquehanna.

“I can remember when I was a little girl seeing really nasty water in the Susquehanna,” she said. “I’ve been able to see water quality improvements in front of my eyes... I saw how really strong public policy can achieve environmental protection.”

According to monitoring by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, total nitrogen levels, total phosphorus levels and suspended sediment in the river are all trending downward as a result of a variety of regulation and education efforts.

Susan Obleski, spokeswoman for the Susquehanna River Basin Commission which monitors the river, said over 20 years of testing at Marietta in Lancaster County have shown a 23 to 32 percent reduction in nitrogen, a 13 to 33 percent reduction of phosphorus and a 28 to 52 percent reduction of suspended sediment.

“The Commission’s findings do help validate the fact that the Commonwealth’s aggressive nutrient and sediment reduction efforts over the years are working and supporting bay restoration efforts,” said John Hines, Deputy Secretary for Water Management for Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Maryland officials report the blue crab population has doubled in the past two years, after restrictions on crabbing were enforced.

But better isn’t necessarily enough. The dead zones persist, and failure to meet water quality goals this year could expose all the states in the Chesapeake Watershed to legally binding cleanup requirements.

Resurgent wildlife

Palmyra Middle School 7th grader Christian Jocham,13, looks for macroinvertebrates in his net at State Memorial Lake in Grantville, so he and his classmates could determine the water quality with the help of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation educators.
CHRISTINE BAKER, The Patriot-News

There are more critters in Penn’s Woods than there were 40 years ago.

The once-endangered Bald Eagles soaring above the trees and streams is the obvious example, but the Pennsylvania Game Commission has overseen the resurgence of a host of species once native to Pennsylvania.

Re-introductions of elk, beaver and, yes, white tail deer in the first decades of the 20th century set the stage. Recent success stories include reintroduction of the peregrine falcon, the Fisher and the highly successful redistribution of otters and black bears.

“With exceptions of pheasant (which are not native) and quail (whose habitat has been lost to sprawl), you can’t really look at any wildlife species without seeing success,” said Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser.

The bobcat population rebounded after hunters and trappers asked for the season to be closed in the 1970s.

“Hunters and trappers are always credited with being the first conservationists, and that’s certainly true in Pennsylvania,” said Feaser. “How many other industries do you know who ask for regulation? They are first and foremost the conservationists.”

Feaser said the resurgence in wildlife has been accomplished through “constant vigilance” and practically zero tax dollars. The agency supports itself on revenue from hunters, and has conserved land, created new habitat and managed hunting and trapping seasons with an eye toward future hunting and viewing opportunities.

Farmland Preserved

In the 1980s and 1990s, Pennsylvania’s urbanized footprint grew by 47 percent, while its population increased by only 2½ percent. That’s sprawl, and it impacts more than just the price of eggs.

“We’ve got some of the best soils on the east coast. Once you cover that with macadam and buildings, you can never really recover that,” said Debbie Bowman, executive director of the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy in Carlisle.

There’s a growing realization that home-grown food is actually a national security issue, said Chuck Wertz, executive director of the Lebanon County Conservation District, which has preserved 15,171 acres since 1991.

Retaining farmland also has energy implications as farmers begin to grow biofuels. But perhaps the biggest benefit is to the water supply.

“Farm lands are recharge areas for water quality and water quantity,” said Wertz. Given the varied benefits, he said, “It’s a pretty profound program.”

Because of this critical connection between farmland and water, farmers are also focusing more intently on nutrient management plans to prevent excess fertilizers from leaching into rivers and streams.

Pennsylvania has been a national leader in farmland preservation, spending over $1 billion since 1988 to preserve 433,776 acres of land.

In the midstate, that includes: 12,927 acres in Dauphin County, 14,220 acres in Cumberland County, 15,171 acres in Lebanon County, 6,868 acres in Perry County, 37,327 acres in York County, and 54,616 acres in Lancaster County.

A Fresher Breath Of Air

“Anyone with memory of what it was like 40 years ago knows air quality was something you could often see and smell,” said Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association in Camp Hill.

Although air quality still isn’t as good as the American Lung Association would like, it has been improving significantly since the 1970s, both nationwide and in the midstate.

Within just a few years of the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, the upward trend of air pollution in the United States either stopped or slowed. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, pollutants that had increased by as much as 600 percent in the previous 70 years, almost immediately began to level off and decrease.

With continuing regulation of things ranging from coal-burning power plants to house paint, and with increasing public awareness of energy efficiency in homes, the workplace and personal transportation, air pollution has continued to fall, even while the economy has grown.

In the last 20 years alone, particulate pollution fell between 29 and 58 percent, Sulfur Dioxide by 50 percent, Nitrogen Oxides by 36 percent, volatile organic compounds by 35 percent.

The increase in frequent, convenient and accessible public transportation is one of the factors contributing to cleaner air, said Nathan Willcox, a clean air advocate at PennEnvironment. Capital Area Transit has seen a 33-percent increase in ridership within the past five years. Private vehicles are a large slice of the air pollutant pie - but not nearly as much as they once were.

Perhaps the greatest achievement came with direct regulation of cars and trucks and the mandated switch to unleaded gasoline, which reduced the amount of lead in the atmosphere by over 86 percent in the last 25 years.

“Even though the number of cars has increased and the vehicle miles per year have increased, the air pollution caused by vehicles has really decreased significantly,” said Stewart.

Minds Have Changed

One of the greatest - though intangible - changes since the first Earth Day is a wider awareness of environmental issues.

A number of local conservation leaders pointed to “The Crying Indian” in the famed television campaign for “Keep America Beautiful” in the early 70s as a watershed event.

The television commercial featuring Chief Iron Eyes Cody aired for the first time on Earth Day 1971. It showed an American Indian Chief surveying the pollution caused by modern society. At the end, trash is thrown from a passing car and lands at the Indian’s feet; he turns to the camera, and a single tear runs down his cheek.

“For me that was the beginning of the movement of being aware,” said Debbie Bowman, executive director of the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy in Carlisle.

Jarrett, of Penn Future, agreed, and noted that the ad appeared when people were reading news of rivers so polluted they caught fire and air so polluted it got dim at mid-day.

“There was an icon of a people strongly identified with living in harmony with nature,” said Jarrett, and the ad “conveyed an explicitly environmental message and included a call to action without saying a word.”

The campaign is credited with reducing litter by as much as 88 percent and was later named one of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th Century.

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